


Creeptober 2018

by Merixcil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Cannibalism, Creeptober, Death, Drug Use, Gen, Ghosts, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-23 12:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 15,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: A series of short pieces written for Creeptober 2018. All original work or in conjunction with art and characters byAshes





	1. Cursed

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings at the begining of each chapter

In the dark you lose your eyesight and then you lose our damn eyes. Eyes be damned. Along with the rest of you. Mother always said that was a bad word but she’s up there and the girl’s down here and the girl’s already blind so really, what does it matter?

Soil slips past the fleshy, delicate ends of her tail. When she was big soil looked like mud and it smelled of nothing but now that she lives amongst it she knows better. It’s made of dead things and dead things stink. Rotting, putrid, sticking to her sides and pushing its way down her throat. She could live without the digestive system, to be honest. But our God is a vengeful God and He doesn’t give you options to customise your look before He casts you out of His kingdom.

Sometimes she still says her prayers and wonder if He can hear, if He has the capacity to care.

Hands clear the soil and soil tumbles down to fill the space it left behind. Again and again. The teacher at school told the whole class a story about a man who couldn’t stop pushing a boulder up a hill but he had it easy. She’s been down here for years or forever or since yesterday afternoon and this is definitely worse.

Her body isn’t her own. Her voice is gone. She used it to do Bad things so He took her away from it, stranded everything she had left to say in the whole entire rest of her life, in a body that will wither and die and stuck the rest of her in the body of the first thing He could think of that didn’t have the capacity for speech. She has considered, on exactly five hundred and forty two occasions, that she might one day eat her own flesh in penance for speaking out of turn and every time she has decided that she should never have thoughts again.

There’s not much else left to think about. The stink and the dark. The need to eat. She eats things that smell worse than soil, things that are on their way to becoming part of the earth but aren’t there yet. She squirms and writhes and fights against the rising tide of small, horrible, blinded things that are also trying to win their fair share of an apple, a cat, the rain.

And early birds will catch her. And she will split in two and grow herself a new tail. She doesn’t get to stop.

The surface beckons her upwards, daring her to poke her head above the ground. Funny. He had time to take so much but He let her keep her face, He let her keep her hands. Our God is a merciful God.

Her eyes are damned. The darkness damned them all on its own. Light is incomprehensible, it burned out what was left of her retinas the first time she tried it out. Perhaps that’s a blessing, to have your eyes rendered useless when you have been cursed to live amongst the dead.


	2. Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning routine disrupted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: odontophobia, body horror

Mornings never run late enough. Deep winter keeps London in the dark long after the socially acceptable time to be awake if you have to be at work that day. It’s bullshit, having to brush your teeth in the unflattering halogen glow of a bulb on the blink because the sun hasn’t pulled its shit together long enough to do the job itself.

Jameka glares into the sink so she doesn’t have to meet her own eye in the bathroom mirror. Her hair falls forward, long enough to trail in the sink and catch the tail end of the foam that she spits from her mouth. She’s been thinking of dying it, maybe going blonde and showing up at her parents’ on the weekend just to have them turn her away for betraying her roots, or whatever. Her mother will say she doesn’t keep it well either way. Rats’ nest, that’s what she’s packing.

The roof of her mouth twitches and irritates underneath the toothpaste. She stops scrubbing away at her teeth to push against it with her tongue, trying to stop the itch. It doesn’t work. She spits, rinses and gives herself a minute to recover from the toothpaste.

It’s an allergic reaction, probably. She gets those. Never like this before but she’ll take it over spending the morning puking because she accidentally ate something with almonds in it. She makes for the medicine cabinet, pulling out off-brand antihistamines and throwing one down her throat while she prods ineffectually at her itchy pallet.

It’s getting worse. Jameka doesn’t even think, just grabs the freshly cleaned toothbrush and shoves it into her mouth, bristles first to take the edge off the sting.

After a minute, it hurts. After two, she can’t stop. Blood pools behind her bottom incisors till it spills over and starts to chase her toothpaste foam down the drain. It takes time for these pills to kick in. She could be standing her scrubbing her mouth raw for the next half hour.

Or-

Ten seconds later and the itch vanishes into thin air. Jameka turns on the faucet and doesn’t look at the blood in the sink. She swirls water between her teeth and feels the shredded shin of her pallet brushing against her tongue.

Curiosity gets the better of her when she sticks a finger back into her mouth, to press against the roof and see if it comes away bloody, but rather than the rough texture of over-moist skin she’s met by something hard and smooth. The finger leaves her mouth with a squeal, and you best believe it comes away bloody.

It doesn’t matter how hard she tries to look at herself in the mirror, the light's not strong enough and the angle’s all wrong to see what kind of damage has been done. She probes again it’s with her tongue, terrified that she knows what’s coming, that she’s about to meet bone. How do you explain that to a dentist? Jameka’s never heard of someone scratching their mouth down to the bone before.

Tongue hits the same hard surface as finger. It pauses, unable to work out if what it feels is smooth or rough. It moves and finds texture without pattern. Finds texture all too familiar.

The taste of blood and mint congeals in Jameka’s throat, bile rising fast behind them, as she uses the tip of her tongue to carefully count the newly emerged teeth.


	3. Holes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a hole in the ocean. Something comes through

At the end of the pier, the ocean opens up and swallows itself pouring away down a patch of midnight the colour of the sky before snow hits. There's a redness to it, like a wound in the universe.

"Don't go near there." Jane's mother chides, pulling her back from the flat she of the semi permanent camp of scientists that has grown up around the Hole.

Jane's not supposed to bother them while they work. She's not supposed to get too close for fear of falling in. Her mother's fear, that is. Jane St Clements has never fallen down anything more serious than a hill and that was on purpose. She can't see how falling into the ocean would be any different.

Morperth is a small town with a big future. In the winter, the houses closest to the waterfront are in danger of flooding as the tide creeps ever closer to their front doorsteps. Mr Cravey, the old school headmaster, can be seen on Christmas mornings, swatting away the waves with a rolled up newspaper.

The new headmaster is less eccentric. He talks to them all about the Hole at the end of the pier most Mondays, in assembly. He gives them updates on what the scientists have found (nothing) and whether North Beach is safe to play on yet (no. Not that that stops most kids, you just need to head further south, stay out of the scientists' way). At first it had been all anyone could talk about but now Jane barely remembers the Hole is there unless her mother is telling her not to go near it or a teacher is telling her that no one knows anything about it.

The south end of North Beach is full of rockpools. The rock they're form from is slippery and hard to climb with seaweed but Jane's never fallen. It's worth it for the crabs you can find up there, confrontational in the extreme and always ready to snip your fingers if you don't come armed with enough bacon runs to appease them. Every parent had made up a rule about how you're not supposed to go to the rockpools by yourself but sometimes doing things by yourself is the only way you can find the room to think.

Jane scoops up shells from the rockpools and throws back any that turn out to be hermit crabs. The hem of her school dress is going to stink with seawater when she goes to school tomorrow.

The rush of the ocean, still rising to meet the land along the beach hut failing where it runs I to the Hole, surrounds her. Like this, Jane meets Enaj.

Enaj because her dress is the same shape as Jane's and their voices match. Enaj because she's all wrong.

She sounds like the howl of timber straining under winter storm winds. She looks like the hits left behind when the neighbours cat kills something on Jane's patio.

"Hello?" Jane asks the other girl standing up on the rocks.

Enaj screams.

She screams all the way home, leaving bits of herself on the pavement that seem to grow back almost instantly. Limbs grow and regrow and split in half and grow again. Jane tries to look at her but her eyes keep sliding away, leaving black spots in her vision. Enaj is made of holes, stitched together with strands of a person.

Jane's mother doesn't like her one bit. "What the hell is that thing?" She screams almost as loud as Enaj.

Jane shrugs. "She's me. Sort of. I think she came from the hole."

In hindsight, she shouldn't have said anything. She should have left Enaj down by the beach and kept her to herself. But then the seagulls would have gotten her and the crabs would have mistaken her for bacon rind.

The scientists take Enaj away and Jane isn't supposed to go to school for a week. She sits at the doctor's office, prodding the black parts of her vision, still unable to mend. "Where did she go?"

"I don't know." The doctor replies. She sounds angry with Jane.

Jane swallows the horrible tasting medicine and goes back home, hand in hand with her mother. They stroll along the promenade, staring out at the ocean, as flat as a millpond.

The ocean hasn't been flat in a long time.

"They've gone!" Jane points to the place where the scientists used to live, now empty save for a final pair of tents that are sat rather miserably on the end of a pier with no hole at the end.

At her shoulder, Jane's mother tenses. "Darling-"

Jane feels it too, but she doesn't get a chance to say as much before the still afternoon is flooded with a cacophony of shrieks and wails, rising off the beach, loud enough to burst your eardrums.

They don't wait to find out what the hole left behind. Jane just grabs her mother's hand and runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Energy for editting? I don't know her. Sorry if this is subpar


	4. Fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will's hand has a mind of it's own

**Th** umb and index finger swing down to form the legs on the left hand side of the body. On the right, ring and little finger get the job. The whole thing is rather unbalanced, legs splayed wide and tucked in close to account for the discrepancy in height.

Middle finger, the longest and most willful of the lot, gets to play head. It looks up at Will and the ragged edges of the nail seem to smile.

I have plans, it thinks. I have powers.

"What are you doing?" Stacy laughs, looking down at Will's hand, steepled on the table like a hobby horse.

Will shakes his head. "I'm not doing anything."

Stacy laughs again. She's good at that. A real funtime girl.

Five minutes later and the middle finger has bitten deep into her nose. She's not laughing anymore then.

"What happened?" The policeman asks. His bored drawl betrays a miserly dissatisfaction with the case.

On the table, Will's hand is stuck in atrophy, trying to scuttle away from him. "I...I don't know."


	5. Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tammy goes to see him

He's watching. Right now. Always. Tammy glances at the jar of fish eyes on the counte and tries not imagine that they have each been plucked, perfect and full formed from his head,all for the sake of keeping his damn eyes on her. 

"Can I help you?" The receptionist doesn't have a hair out of place. Tugged back I to a neat little bun, lipstick and nail varnish matching perfectly. She looks like a Barbie doll come to life.

Tammy opens her mouth and immediately forgets everything she came here to say. She laughs, short and awkward. "What's with the fish eyes?"

"Oh! You have quite the eye yourself, if you don't mind me saying. Most people think these come from frogs. My employer has a vested interest in understanding various forms of sight. He feels this is one of his more attractive specimens." 

It's new, it wasn't there last week. Tammy's eyes darted to the camera behind the desk. The lense bulges outwards, hidden amongst the miriad eyes depicted on the back wall. A month ago, he was far less concerned with subtlety. Good old fashioned CCTV was good enough for him, complete with the funny little box cameras that go with it. 

Tammy risks another glance at the fish eyes. "Amazing."

The receptionist beams. Like everything else here, she's new. "Isn't it just? Are you here to see my employer?" 

"If he's free."

"He's rarely free. But something tells me he'll make time for you."

Tammy could laugh. The occupation implant hidden behind her nose twitches in warning. Better not. He's always watching. 

Salmon pink nails hold down the community link through to his office. The receptionist glances at Tammy as she negotiates timings with him. Her face is an open book, all smiles. Save the electronic, inhuman flickers hiding behind her right pupil, begging Tammy to run.


	6. Hollow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things end and don't make sense

"So what do you think happens next?"

"Next?"

"Yeah." 

"Oh." Abdi's eyes try and fail for find focus on the uneven edge of the ocean, every changing as the tide rises and falls to meet the day. "I hadn't thought about it."

The girl next to him smiles like she knows him. She's not speaking Somali or Italian or Eritrean or even fucking Arabic. Her skin is pale amber, heart shaped face framed by curtains of black hair so straight you could use it as a ruler. Her brown furrows. "What, not at all? How can you not think about it?" 

Abdi shrugs. "Haven't found the time."

Silence permeats the space between them, drowning out the gentle humming of the waves. The pink and purple catastrophe of the sky is unchanging and hard to look at. It seems unlikely that it has always been that way. 

The girl fidgets and throws her hair back over her shoulders. They're all just waiting for someone to come and get them. 

All of them. There might just be the two. Abdi wants to introduce himself but he can't remember his name. 

He can't remember anything, save the feel of the sand beneath him and the shine of the girl's hair. "Where are we?" 

She smiles. "Now you're getting it." 

Abdi doubts this very much. He can't think that there would be anything left to get. He tries to examine his feelings on the matter but his heart returns an absence of information, leaving him empty save for the colour of the sky


	7. Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stories of the house on the hill

The house on the hill shakes and groans under the weight of the wind. Pots twitch on their fixings, hung over the aga; a door slams shut of it's own accord. The wind whipping down the chimney stokes the fire to new heights, the flames billowing out in every direction, threatening the log pile so carefully arranged out of its reach.

Pat sinks down deeper into his jumper. "Not sure I like this place?"

"What d'you mean?" Sinead barely looks up from the coffee table book she's been pouring through for the last hour, transfixed by barren landscapes in far of places.

Pat thinks to say something about ghosts but decides he sounds like a child before he gets going. His mam always said that was superstitious nonsense but his grandparents swear blind there was a spirit of some kind living in the walls at the big house in cork.

He shrugs off his embarrassment. "Bit spooky, don't you think?"

"Yeah." Sinead's eyes light up. Her long, river gold hair has caught the colour of the fire, making her look like a spectre who has temporarily borrowed the form of a woman. "it's cool, right?"

Wincing, Pat leans in to drape an arm around her shoulders. He looks down at the book and sees a fragment of a glacier, the surface thick with snow but fading to a violent turquoise where the ground has cracked to let it through. The cold settles ever deeper over him.

"Sure is." Pat mutters.

The sound of something that couldn't possibly be wind rustles through the house. It sounds like broken bones and nails on a chalk board. Pat looks back over his shoulder and thinks he sees the outline of something human written in the shadows from the fire, but it vanishes before he can open his mouth to say as much.  
  
  


 

Perhaps this place will become a tourist trap. It doesn't seem possible that a town so quiet could allow such a concept to infect it and yet this is the third person to come by saying that they'll turn it into a holiday home.

The bed on which Michael died has lost the mattress but kept the frame, set up in the master bedroom as a clear demonstration of what this place might be. Apparently the headboard is Victorian, not that anyone ever told him. It was cheap, it was easy. It never looked that good when he was alive.

It's easiest to watch people from the walls, he's found. They give him something solid to anchor himself to and reduce the chances of him accidentally spooking anyone. Mary has the kitchen and Connor prefers to play in the garden, so Michael's left to wander the top floor.

The others have already let go of this place. Michael has to keep reminding them that he's been gone less than a year.

The estate agent is a plucky young thing he used to see down the pub on Friday nights. Her makeup is always pristine, hair scraped back into a frighteningly professional bun. "three bedrooms, nice garden. Perfect for a small holiday cottage"

The couple nod and smile and pass comment on the design choices they'll make once this place is in their hands. Michael feels the stomach he no longer has drop out of him

_It's going to be them._

He feels five and fifty all at once. He wasn't much older than that when the heart attack got him, but he'd lived here long enough that it felt like the house should have been his forever. He hadn't expected Janet to pack up and leave.

Michael's best approximation of fists hit the inside of the walls. Against the odds, he hears the thumb resonate through the walls.

The wife looks back over her shoulder, hand reaching for her husband. "Did you hear that?"

The estate agent doesn't let them entertain the possibility. "Have you got time to take a look at the basement?"

 _It happens_. Mary soothes, as the three of them move on. _I'm so sorry, but it happens_.

Michael lets himself sob it out, picking helplessly at the edge of this realm. He just wants to leave, as if he'll ever get the chance.  
  
  
  


At first, nothing seems to have changed. Her eyes still see, her mind still races, but her heart's not in it. Mary lies very still, watching the faces of her children transmorph from fear that the worst might happen to horror that it already has. Death, she has always thought, ought to be painless, but it's something of a bother that it's so seamlessly linked to life.

It's something of a relief to lose the lungs, if she's being honest. They've been bugging her for the past week. Mary holds her breath and imagines that she can float above the scene playing out before her and immediately finds that she can.

Her ears haven't been what they used to these past years, but the sound is especially muggy now. She opens her mouth to speak and though something comes out, it's immediately obvious she hasn't been heard.

Just like in the old days. Mary smiles to herself. It's sort of awful that she has to watch the gathered hoardes below but it's rather wonderful to see herself as she was, in her last minutes, and know that she never has to go through that again. The body will be gone by morning, doctor's orders, so she better make the most of it.

 _I suppose they'll sell the house_ , she mutters to herself. That's no trouble to her. She's under no obligation to leave.

 _Who are you?_ A child's voice answers.

Mary turns around looking for the source but finds nothing. _Where are you?_

Laughter, light and breezy, seems to rise through the floorboards. _I'm not anywhere silly, I'm dead._

_I'm dead too. Why can't I see you?_

_We're invisible_. The child replies. _We can talk though. I'd like to do that. I haven't had anyone to talk to in ages._

Mary blinks, or some part of her slides closed then opens again. Before she knows it they're well into next week, and though the house is still hers it doesn't smell right any more. She takes up residence in the pipes behind the aga, where the familiar heat of family is never entirely gone.

Five years later she won't really be able to move beyond the kitchen door. The rest of the house becomes so different so fast that she can't maintain her ownership of it. The child stays out of her reach as new faces move in, humming and skipping his way through the garden.  
  


 

Mummy won't stop crying and daddy hasn't said anything to him all day. The room is too hot and too cold all at once and though everyone tells him that he's got a fever, the cold cloth that keeps being draped across his forehead has started to hurt.

"You need to keep this on!" Edith tells him off as she hurries into the room. Mummy finds it hard to be in here with him so his sisters are helping out a lot. "This is important, Connor."

Connor has opinions on this, but his mouth feels funny and everything he says sounds wrong. He wants to get up, go find his ball that he left in the garden.

Edith's face is tight with worry. She's fifteen, starting to grow her own adult expressions. At seven, Connor is ages off growing his own.

He's vaguely aware of someone praying at his bedside, and it might be the priest but it's probably Edith and Anne. Connor tries to breathe and it all goes wrong, tripping him up and pushing him out of himself till he feels like he's flying.

The garden is lovely in the summer. He's allowed to play outside so late, while the sun takes it's time to dip below the horizon. Connor can't feel the grass beneath his feet anymore, but he can see his ball, lying at the end of the garden, letting the weeds swallow it a little more each year.


	8. Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tales from the marsh

**The urban legend:**

There's a man in the woods with murder on the brain. He picks out his victims from amongst the unsuspecting folk who dare to go out alone after dark and he drags them into the marsh to drown them. Kelly swears down her cousin's best friend went missing two weeks ago and this is the only explanation that makes sense, if you don't think about it too hard. The obvious solution would be to keep out of the woods all together, but fifteen year olds in large groups love the idea of something dangerous that their brains won't quite accept as real. The passionate imagination of a child at war with the sensibility they're still practicing in preparation for adulthood.

Kelly's cousin's friend went missing two weeks ago. Since then, there have been three other disappearances.

 

 

**The local folklore:**

About a hundred years back, one of the workers up at the mill had to take the long way round when work was done for the day to avoid running into the local constable after a night of heavy drinking put him in a spot of bother with the man. He made his way into the woods and, not knowing the path,wandered off into the bog.

He was never found, but if you listen closely on dark, moonless nights, you might just be able to hear him calling out for help.   
  


 

 

**The myth:**

Anywhere there are wetlands, there are devious little creatures that would drag people into them. For food or for fun. The precise nature of these stories varies from country to country but it's clear this is an anxiety that has plagued mankind for as long as they've been able to feel fear looking into the muggy waters of a peat marsh.

Some of these creatures light the way. Some of them woo people like sirens, with beautiful song. Most likely this all just originates from drunk or careless individuals wandering into wetlands and getting themselves stuck, but it is interesting that these stories crop up with such regularity the world over

 

 

 

**The old wives tale:**

The smiling man comes after children who go walking in the woods after dark. He's always smiling because he's always happy to see you but you should never be happy to see him.

You still have to smile though, you have to pretend. That's the only way to stop the smiling man from gobbling you up. If he thinks you're having a nice time, he'll let you pass. But if he doesn't, he'll drag you into the marsh and gobble you up!

You stay out of those woods, you hear me?  
  
  


 

 

**The ghost story:**

The man from the mill seeks vengeance on the people who failed to save him, but especially on policemen who drove him into the woods. If you're not careful, he'll catch you as the sun's on the turn, when he's just starting to wake up but you're sure that the sun is too high in the sky for him to get to you. He covers your mouth so you can't scream and then he holds you under the rank marsh water till you drown.

So go on then, I double dare you, go out to the woods tonight. If you're lucky enough to make it, I'll tell everyone I was wrong to call you a pussy.   
  


 

 

 

**The police report:**

Officer: Hartman   
Location: South Ferry Woods   
Time: 19:15 on the 8th of October 2018   
Report: Victim found in the wetlands surrounding the woods. Identity not yet confirmed though it is believed by many of the officers present to be the body of Vanessa Lyle, a local resident who has been missing for two weeks. No one else was seen at the crime scene and forensics were brought in to scour the area for useful information. Bruises on the victim's face suggest they were physically restrained. As the body has entered the initial stages of decomposition we are now waiting for the full forensic report before we proceed with the investigation. Please see missing person's report 1854, which we believe we will be able to close shortly. 

 

 

 

**The truth:**

The woods are so nice at night. Not just because the local wildlife is all the more likely to cross your path, though that's certainly a massive boom of being out here after hours, but it's quiet in a way that just can't be replicated in the daylight.

Vanessa follows the path she knows so well, walking faster than she'd like with the intention of getting back home before her mum realises she's missing. Mum doesn't like it when she goes out at night, and she really wouldn't like that Vanessa has been coming out to the woods.

Supposedly, the woods are creepy. They're just trees, really. Ever since the main paths were paved over properly it's really hard to get lost in the marsh and even then it's not that deep. You would have a job drowning in it, no matter what the local legends might say.

Vanessa rounds a corner and catches the outline of something up ahead. At first, she's irrationally grumpy that anyone would come out to her patch of the world at her time of day like that. It feels like a major intrusion, despite the fact that she knows there's no way they could have known.

As she approaches, she starts to get concerned. The rounded black edges of a Parker surrounding a body hunched over on the ground are just about visible, even without the mood to guide the eye. Vanessa reaches for her phone to shine a little light on the situation but her hands keep slipping, unable to make the screen light up. "Hello?"

The woods go very silent, all at once. The sound of leaves rustling and wings beating and things falling shut out and Vanessa never knew how loud this place was. The figure on the ground starts to turn towards her, and before she can properly process what she's doing she's turning tail and running. Her cheeks ache and stretch, trying to maintain a smile as the silence bears down upon her.


	9. Flesh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It comes quietly

It comes quietly and, at first, slowly. Seeping through the cracks in the floorboards, drifting in through open windows. It comes so slowly that most victims don’t even realise it’s there.

“I don’t like that stain in the bathroom.”

“Well, I’ve tried everything, it won’t shift.”

Soap and bleach, while nasty to taste, can’t shift it. A stray foot moves to the shower and it latches hold, twisting itself between the toes where it’s harder to spot. If it could, it would slip under the skin, but it hasn’t found a way to harness the power of self-control far enough to make a good go of it.  

The pieces and parts of a human body all have their own particular stink. Sweat and blood are the most famous, but the lungs smell different from the liver which smells different from the brain. All together, they smell divine.

It creeps its way slowly up the bodies, settling over them in the dark and breaking in deep. When it finds an opening, the nose, the ears, a cut they forgot to close (never let it be said that infections won’t kill you, kids) and then it moves just as fast as it can carry itself. It’s not a death, so much as an assimilation, dissolving everything down to its component cells and inviting it, oh so gently, to join.

They normally kick and protest at first, right up till they realise that it’s assimilation or death. It sighs, it breathes, it will never feel full. The red raw flesh of its body vanishes back into the recesses of the house and away to its next victim, the next few pieces of its ever growing body.


	10. Cross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A vampire goes to church

Cane always said that churches were full of mirrors, he said it with the kind of smug assurance that let you know you didn’t have to ask if they were silver backed or not.

“Why would they do that?” George mumbled on cue, every time.

Cane shrugged. “To keep vampires out, probably.”

That was before George had had time to make the mistake of looking into a mirror for himself. All he saw was the empty space where he was supposed to be. It didn’t burn, it didn’t hurt. It certainly didn’t strike him out of existence like Cane had told him it wood.

Cane laughed, barely looking up from the squirrel he’d been slowly draining over the afternoon. “I mean, it was kind of funny that you bought it though.”

What Cane was right about is that churches just feel wrong. As soon as he entered the graveyard, George felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. When he was human, he might have persuaded himself that it was all in his head, but once his bloodlust grew in it became impossible to ignore the animal instinct to view the world through slit pupils and raised hackles.

He used to come to church as a kid, and he never liked it. In the dark, the stained glass windows have been stained a dusky blue, catching what shreds of moonlight haven’t been swallowed by the clouds and transmuting them into half-baked versions of their true colours.

The sting behind George’s eyes is more an irritation than actually painful, like trying to sneeze and not quite making it. He had forgotten, in his anger at Cane, that churches are built in the shape of a cross. Just being here is bad for him. Just standing at the crossroads of the pews, looking down towards the heavy bolted doors of the vestry or up towards the sanctum of the altar.

The altar is shrouded in darkness, obscured so that it’s only possible to see it’s there by the shimmering silver cross sat in the middle of it. Anyone would tell you it’s a bad idea to leave something to valuable lying around like that, but people love to do stupid things.

Vampires also love to do stupid things. They have that in common. For two weeks George has been nursing an irrepressible desire to fall on his knees, go to confession, expunge some of the worst pieces of himself. He only ever associated those things with churches and this one will have to do, even if it’s not catholic.

“Father?” He breathes. His voice is loud and discordant, bounding off the high ceilings. He’s not sure if that’s the correct greeting, but it feels really stupid to start up that ‘are you there God, it’s me, George’ bullshit. God is either there or he’s not, and he hates vampires or he doesn’t. But if he doesn’t, then the human race has done a remarkably good job at winding him up with all their myths about how to kill the undead.

As he approaches the altar, the stinging behind George’s eyes grows all the more profound, till he feels the damn break and tears start pouring over his cheeks. He’ll have a headache in approximately five steps time. He should stop, and yet…

There’s a step that has to be crossed to reach the altar. It’s draped in thick carpet, presumably so the old folks can kneel without damaging themselves more than necessary. Across this is a thin wooden barrier, George has vague memories of holding out his hands and asking for bread and wine but receiving nothing more than a blessing.

Some blessing that was. Maybe if they’d let him swallow the body and blood of the dear Jesus Christ it might have given him the holy energies he needed to die from the bit Cane gave him. Not that he wouldn’t want to walk the Earth, but sometimes he thinks it would be nice to have been given the choice rather than had the option thrust upon him.

“Father!” George chokes out. He no longer knows if the alcove is dark or if his vision has been blurred by tears. He reaches up to wipe his eyes and for a blinding second he swears he can smell the rich tang of human blood, right under his nose.

Not here, not now. He can’t imagine that feeding on holy ground will be at all good for him.

George’s foot hits the step and his blood feels like it’s on fire. He rears back, shaking the blood from his eyes. The only thing he can see is the shining silver cross, silently judging him, and he knows that Cane didn’t have to be right about the mirrors to tell him not to come here tonight.


	11. Roots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The walls crack

The cracks in the wall are just the beginning, precursors to what Sally will one day realise was an inevitable tidal wave. She comes into the living room one morning and sees the hairline fracture splintering its way up the wall just behind the TV. It’s not exactly the greatest start to a day she’s ever had but shit happens in these old houses. When she stops by Mrs Mellor’s next door, she’s having the same problem. Not exactly surprising when you share a wall with someone. Sally huffs her way through it, finds out some plaster and fixes up the crack herself.

The next morning she comes down and finds two cracks, each bigger than the one that had been there the day before. For the first time, she worries somewhat, though only for the structural integrity of her home. Truth be told, she’s not quite sure who to call till she speaks to Mrs Mellor about it that afternoon and they find out a number from the council.

The council will be here in a week. Sally bites her lip, looking at the hole in the wall. Something tells her it’s not going to be enough.

The third day brings sprouts cropping up from the edge of the cracks. After careful inspection, Sally concludes that they’re not mould, but that she doesn’t like them one bit. She tries spraying them with weed killer and it does nothing.

The third and fourth day nothing seems to change. At the end of day four Sally starts keeping a record of how wide the cracks have gotten and by the next morning she wishes she’d been doing so from day one. It’s millimetres of difference, but it’s difference.

Day six – the wall looks like it has been systematically slashed by an indescribably large cat. It makes Sally’s skin crawl to look at it, and sends her running to call the council. They’ve evidently heard from Mrs Mellor already, apparently they have plans to come out that afternoon, if they can spare the time.

They can’t spare the time. Of course. Sally debates finding a friend’s to stay at that night, somewhat paranoid that the roof will fall down around her ears if she’s not careful, but in the end decides she needs to be here in case someone comes by first thing.

On the seventh morning, Sally creeps round the corner of her living room, ready for the worst, and sees the rough tips of half a dozen roots pointing through the cracks. She’s out of the house before she can think about it.

There’s no sign of a large plant growing over her home, or over Mrs Mellor’s home for that matter. Sally debates climbing up onto the fence between their gardens to get a better look but stops when she sees her neighbour, curled up in a ball and shivering on the ground.

“Where did it come from?” She whispers.

Sally looks down at her, and imagines the roots bursting from the ground to suck her under. And she knows there’s nothing she can say.


	12. Mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s it supposed to do?”
> 
> Calligan smiles, careful not to reveal the faintest sliver of his teeth. “It protects you.”

“What’s it supposed to do?”

Calligan smiles, careful not to reveal the faintest sliver of his teeth. “It protects you.”

The cold white plastic of the mask feels flimsy under Gabby’s hands. She doesn’t believe it. “I don’t see how.”

“What makes you doubt me?”

Gabby holds up the mask and without breaking it, bends it into a perfect arch. With a shrug, she lets it fall back onto the work surface, where it lands with a clatter. It blends in quite neatly with the sterile environment of the lab, which is more or less deserted at this hour of the night but still brightly lit by the over aggressive strip lights.

“I mean, for one thing I find it kind of dodgy that you’re not testing this out on yourself.” Gabby counts off. “And for another, this shit isn’t protecting anyone.”

A slight twitch of the eye is all the indication she gets that Calligan is in any way annoyed. Gabby makes a conscious effort to let it slide. It’s hard, he doesn’t have many people who give a shit about him. Plenty of people think that she only hangs around due to some misplaced loyalty that she developed when he was supervising her PhD.

Artificial intelligence. That’s what Gabby and Calligan are all about. This though, this is plastic.

Calligan leans across the work surface. Sometimes Gabby can see what people mean when they say he’s creepy. His hair is never cut properly and those milky blue eyes can cut right through you if you’re not careful. “Just put it on.”

“Alright, old man.” Gabby picks up the mask and looks around for something to fix it to her face.

“It will stick all on its own.”

Gabby manoeuvres the eyeholes to be sure she can see through the thing properly. It doesn’t appear to have been designed for someone with her face shape in mind. The mouth hole is about half a centimetre too low for her to speak clearly if she wants to be able to see. Still. She goes ahead and lets it fit itself to her face and sure enough, it sticks all on its own.

For a split second, she is looking out through the eyeholes of the mask, feeling the cool of the plastic adjust itself to her skin, then Gabby is shunned aside and forced into a hole she wasn’t aware she had going free at the back of her mind.

What the fuck? She wants to say, but her mouth doesn’t move.

Her mouth is lined up perfectly with the mouth hole of the mask. The whole thing has adjusted itself to fit her specifically.

Through the crack in her consciousness, she can see Calligan still sat across the work surface, telescoped. At this angle she can’t use her eyes properly.

“You see.” Calligan explains. “You are now protected. Not your body so much as your mind. You are not you, you just look like you. All the important pieces are tucked away, safe, where nobody can see them. I’m anticipating making a fortune when I sell this patent to a military contractor.”

Manufactured dissociation. The bastard did it. And to think that Gabby doubted him. She wants to say something congratulatory but she can’t. Her body does something, but it’s out of her control, far beyond her little pocket of nothing in the real.

It is beyond her.

When does he let me out? Is the thought dashing through her mind. I can’t very well let myself out.

Through her distorted vision, Gabby sees Calligan smile wide, shake her hand and send her on her way.


	13. Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some very grim body horror stuff in this one

He comes to with a start, and for a moment all he can really process is that the space around him is very, very dark. The pain hits a moment later, simultaneously blinding and insignificant through his confusion.

Deep breath, stop yourself from panicking. Gareth blinks against the dark and waits for it to dissipate. He waits and he waits and he waits. He waits long enough for the wrenching ache of his legs to creep up on him, for the angle of his arms to register as fundamentally wrong. He’s been here for a while, for long enough that he stopped screaming.

Perhaps he stays conscious and time starts to warp around him, perhaps he falls asleep and comes to many times as he searches his memory for some hint of what’s happening.

There had been a thing, a monster. Only monsters aren’t real, but the only memory he has of it is something large, black, hulking mass with teeth that had been strong enough to bend his legs back on himself.

The fracture in his left tibia screams at the memory. It’s possible that the broken ends of the bone are jutting out through the skin but in this light it’s not so easy to be sure.

A room lit by a single lamp at the far end, everything doused in an ugly shade of green that it feels like Gareth might have painted over it all. It doesn’t seem real, the thing in his head looks like a film.

There had been a box, in the corner, made of dark wood and with a padlock on the front the size of a grapefruit. There had been a box…a box…

He’s in a box.

The dimensions of the memory suggest that he had been folded over twice to sit inside here. Thinking about it provokes a phantom sensation of pain, like he knows he should be feeling it and so his brain is supplying the necessary anguish. He opens his mouth to scream and nothing comes out and Gareth can’t be sure if that’s due to oxygen running low or his voice being all screamed out.

He tries to rock his body forward, judging the weight of the box and in that moment, the pain becomes real. The mangled mess of his arms light up in clear coated agony, the bits of his legs that have been crumbled down into what space there is left in here are no longer islands but a deep reef of blinding awfulness that he can’t escape. His back, the least and the worst of his concerns, has been twisted into an uncomfortable position but it hasn’t been broken.

Not broken. Gareth shakes his head and finds some small capacity for movement. Not broken.

He grits his teeth, presses up hard against the wall of the box, and wonders if it’s possible for a human to break their own neck.


	14. Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past a certain point, you can’t be sure of anything out here.

Past a certain point, you can’t be sure of anything out here. The numbers running along the dashboard don’t make much sense to Navin as is, not really his area of expertise, but even if he could make sense of them he’s pretty sure they wouldn’t be telling him he was expecting to see. They’re supposed to be in dead space but they keep drifting into the gravitational pull of objects that can’t be picked up by their screens and they keep running into electrical storms that the dash readouts suggest should be ripping the ship apart but haven’t even strained the hull so far.

They have a long way to go before they bottom out on their fuel reserves and have been taking it in turns in stasis to try to reduce the overall stress on the all. Just till they get through this weird patch. You get to breathe for a week, then you go back under for five while it cycles through the other crew members. There’s an overlap of about ten minutes at each end in which you get some actual human company and this is supposed to tide you over for the hours spent in dead space.

Point being, when Navin spots something moving in the dark from the cramped cockpit of the ship, he can’t be sure if it’s his mind playing tricks on him, or if something is out there.

If something is out there, so little is known about this area of space that he can’t guarantee that it’s normal. And if it’s normal he can’t guarantee that it’s safe.

Down the main funnel of the ship, something clicks. Navin glances back over his shoulder like he might be able to make out what’s going on. They don’t have the gravity on in here, sometimes things knock against each other in zero grav. Things make noises in oxygen enriched environments.

He refocuses his attention on the porthole. The starts look different, but he can’t be sure.

Something flickers and winks in the dark, and then seems to grow all the darker. For a second, Navin thinks he sees a colour that he doesn’t have a name for.

It’s gone almost immediately, but it leaves the hairs on the back of his neck standing rigid to attention. Navin reaches for the controls, like they’re not on autopilot and like he has the faintest idea of what to do with them if they weren’t. He glances at the timer on the wall and sees he has just over two days left before he’s allowed to see another person.

Two days.

Navin takes a deep breath, opens his eyes as wide as they will go, and settles in to ride it out.


	15. Dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But what’s it made of?”

“But what’s it made of?”

“It’s made of dirt.”

“That’s not a proper answer!”

“It’s a true answer.”

“Dad!”

“Ok! Erm… it’s made of, like, leftovers and stuff.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“It’s true!”

“I don’t think you know what it’s made of.”

“I never said I did.”

“So you don’t know?”

“Well, I kind of know.”

“Then, _kind of_ tell me!”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Then tell me _please_.”

“Good girl. So, dirt is soil and it’s made from the leftover bits once dead things have finished rotting.”

“Dead things?”

“Leaves, fruit, animal bones and stuff.”

“Ew.”

“I know, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyy look at that it's a bona fide drabble. 100 words exactly


	16. Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horrible things come to light in the jungle

The dust displaced from the bottom of the stream billows wide enough to obscure the tips of their boots. Levy glances down and swears he can see faces forming in the clouds, their mouths open in silent screams before the current catches them and sweeps them away.

“Eyes forward, Berkovich.” Snaps the sergeant. “Keep it moving, people.”

Levy doesn’t know these guys. He got drafted in from another unit after the men he was with were massacred out in the jungle. He’s not supposed to talk about it.

They push on, the water soon rising high over the lips of their boots and drenching them up to the knees. Levy doesn’t have any dry socks left, and they’re not due back to basecamp for a week. He’s fucked.

Faces keep spilling up to the surface from the riverbed, mixing with the screeching of the jungle around them till it feels like they’re wailing for personal salvation from Levy. He tries not to let his attention wander from the back of the man in front of him but it’s hard. Even if this weren’t hell, it would be hard. This place is so different from Brooklyn, and through the terror and the damp and the sickening exhilaration that he could die any minute, his mind is racing, trying to catalogue as much of this place as he can while he has eyes to see.

The sergeant’s fist raises at the front of the line, a silent command for them all to stop. Levy holds his breath, scanning the banks for signs of enemy combatants. Adrenaline has lost its sting, and though his heart rate soars he barely notices the urge to run pricking under his skin.

At the front of the column, someone has broken off a tree branch and is trying to dislodge something from the bottom of the river. They have to work for it, fighting back against the layers of silt that have dragged whatever it is down. If they don’t move soon, they’re going to start losing boots to the mud themselves.

It unsticks, with a great rumble as trapped oxygen rushes to the surface. Following soon behind it is the bloated remains of a man.

Or a woman.

Probably not a child.

And once upon a time they might have all reared back from the thing that gets picked up by the current almost immediately, or they might have paused to see if they could work out whose side they might have fought on. But that was then and this is now and now they’re all dumbstruck, beyond caring and beyond remorse. Levy shifts his feet to stop his feet from strangling in the mud and the silt he disturbs chases the body away. With teeth and claws he cannot see, with eyes he cannot recognise. The river moves on around them and by the end of the day the body won’t be so much as a scary story they picked up on the road.


	17. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yours words run out on you

Step 1: You don’t know how you know, but you know. Like a persistent itch that you need to scrape the top two layers of skin away from you have any control over, your limit has been set. Trying to explain this to your line manager is the wrong side of easy, and the whole thing is made the more stressful by how quickly you can see the event horizon of your speech creeping up on you.

You shut your mouth in a hurry. The office looks at you with a careful puzzlement that allows them to stand back and pretend this isn’t their problem. Somewhere along the line, you get a note telling you you’re allowed to take the day of, and you couldn’t thank the person who pulled those strings for you if you tried.

 

 

 

Step 2: Shortcuts. As many of them as you can find. Contractions are your best friend and you have learned more about body language in the past two weeks than you would ever have thought worth knowing before. People can be greeted with a smile, fingers held up at the deli to show how much of everything you need. Work is an email landmine, so you use it as such. It’s all a game, really. Just parsing out where you cut corners, how you go about teaching yourself the rules. You still run out of words before dinner most days, but you’ll get there. On the weekend, you sleep in as late as you can, so when Kirsty invites you to her housewarming you are full to brim with things to day.

Stay out of cabs though, unless you have nowhere else to be. Those things will drain you.

 

 

 

Step 3: Being distant from people at work isn’t so bad, until you’re standing round the water cooler and you can’t have anything to say. It’s not so bad till someone’s standing in your way as you try to get off the subway and you’re jealously guarding what words you have left for the day. It’s not so bad until your voice cuts out half way through a phone call with your mother who proceeds to worry that you’ve died until you can book up your computer and sling her a Facebook message confirming otherwise.

It’s not so bad. People talk and chatter their way through the day and it’s not so bad. It’s really not. The people on the television make their living spouting off bullshit nonsense that someone else wrote for them, designed to be as verbose and arresting as possible. How can they live like that?

If everyone lived like you, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

 

 

 

Step 4: The doctor can’t do anything for you. It happens, sometimes, she says, as if that’s supposed to make you feel better. There are experimental drug trials going on but with so few patients available it’s hard to say when they might have something to take the edge off.

You ask if you might be included in the trials at all, but they’re all on the other side of the country and require a minimum two year commitment. You have a life here, you have a place. Who knows how much you might need to talk to get started somewhere else?

 

 

 

Step 5: Lemon juice, lots of lemon juice. The home cure for everything. Mix it up with honey, or turmeric, or ginger, or all three and watch your problems disappears. You play with half of one, wondering where you should put it to feel the maximum benefit. It’s not like you have a word pouch that can be expunged.

On the internet, people seem to think their might be a word pouch though, hidden away in the inner recesses of the body somewhere hard to reach. It lends a certain evolutionary imperative to language that you find more alarming than comforting, only emphasising your brokenness in ways you never agreed to.

You write back with supposition bordering on superstition, because you don’t have anything concrete to offer and these people must be stopped.

 

 

 

Step 6: You start learning sign language. You look up local support groups for deaf and mute people and work up from there. For the thing you’ve got, there are only online support groups, but the more wide reaching places in your local sphere will let you sit in. You still don’t understand much, but you’ll get there. It’s all going to be alright.

At work, someone has a brother who’s hard of hearing, and suddenly everyone is flashing you their best beginners sign language, and there’s still so much you don’t understand.

You smile and nod. Body language may be your best friend after all.

 

 

 

Step 7:  Lie on the floor of your bathroom and cry. Very important, make sure not to miss this one.

 

 

 

Step 8: There is a woman with bright eyes and wild hair and she’s patient and kind and brings you soup on Saturday lunchtimes. She is called Mandy and she is your best friend and the love of your life. You can’t stop smiling at her, can’t stop leaning in.

You talk in sparse words about all the places you would be if you were not right here, right now, and what you watched on the telly last night. The little things, the stuff that you’re trying to pretend doesn’t matter anymore. You don’t have the energy to let it matter but for her, you can find the words.

Mandy keeps saying that she’ll start learning sign language soon but she never does. Like clockwork, every time you get to the part of the conversation where you’re supposed to tell her you love her, your words cut out and all that’s left is the space between the two of you.

 

 

 

Step 9: It’s all so much easier when you just stop pretending that there’s any way of winning the game. Wake up, brush your teeth, make lunch, go to work. Do it all in silence, do it all without looking in anyone’s eye in case they should try to persuade you that there’s another way to live.

Do it all. Don’t breathe a word.


	18. Dolls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Immortality is just a spell away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been trying not to write fic for this but the first thing I think of when someone brings up creepy dolls is the witches from Macbeth (due to a really spooky production I once saw that made me low-key fall in love with Macduff). Anyway, this is Macbeth fic

By the pricking of their thumbs, out across the heath, it takes time to break themselves down into something that might just harbour a whiff of immortality. Needs must they would have passed through this realm and emerged out the other side as a perfect triad of mewling babes. 

The vessels three that they were compelled to craft were plucked from varied corners of the land. Ferns from the forest, thistle from the meadows and heather from the heath itself. Picture the sisters sitting there beside the final fire, the final cauldron, the final spell a brewing, ready to cast them into the great beyond. 

Together. As one. As three.


	19. Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The magic mirror reveals all

"The magic mirror cannot lie." Cathryn spread her arms wide to accept the adoration of her friends and relatives. The perfect craftsmanship of the thing allowed for a reflection so true to life that none could deny the image they saw staring back at them. From the most carefully defined arch of an eyebrow, to the pore a fraction larger than the rest, right in the middle of a forehead, every flaw and every glory was shown in full. 

Together, hand in hand. Cathryn did so love to take the full measure of a person all at once. As her guests crept up to the diasis in order that they might take a look at themselves, she learnt in over their shoulders to see what her eyes already knew to be true. 

Old men with too much hair and not enough, the more beautiful of the bunch picking out laugh lines and crows feet that any other mirror would have been able to keep hidden from them and that had, in most cases, been quite expertly ignored for many years. It was thrilling, to watch their faces in the reflected glass, as they realised the full extent of their appearance. 

Safe to say, many people left that night rather sombre, though some had a spring in their step that Cathryn couldn't have predicted of she tried. The widow Lester was floating on air, despite the patches of her short white hair that had been lost these past couple of years and the teeth that had rotted away and she did not care to replace. 

Perhaps some people simply intended to look like they were taking a holiday from the crypt. 

"What do you make of it?" Cathryn asked the first maid to come rushing through the door once she has been left for the evening. 

The maid blinks at herself, in all her half grimy, somewhat  badly put together glory. "It's warm." 

Cathryn frowns and urges her to move on down the hall. She looks herself up and down in the mirror, perfectly beautiful down to her very last flaw and perfectly cold.


	20. Crooked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Archie attempts to calm his mother

With meticulous care, Archie takes his spirit level to the portraits lining the walls of his parents' home. He's never had much of an eye for art, too literally minded, as his grandfather said, but he has a talent for organisation that the rest of the family lacks. 

Mother's been letting her mind unravel over the portraits these past couple of months, it's something of a relief that father managed to talk her out of the house for the afternoon so that Archie might sort them out properly. He's tried doing as much under guidance but she shrieks and wails that he'll damage the paint to the point that the exercise feels more upsetting than useful. 

Most of the portraits are out by a degree or two. Not a problem with a single piece hung on a wall of its own but detrimental when the walls are full of misaligned pictures. They show each other up, each telling tales ok it's brothers while exposing its own weakness. 

A lift here, a new fixing for a couple. Nothing takes too long on its own but there's so much to do that Archie is kept busy for hours. He hasn't been done five minutes when the door opens and his parents return from the great wide world. 

There's a beat of perfect silence and then the sounds of his mother's screams echoes through the great old townhouse. Archie goes running, practically spilling his tea, to see what the fuss is. 

He rounds the corner down the main hallway and immediately understands. Despite the hours of careful attention, every portrait has jutted out at an odd angle, leaving a trail of crooked artworks to light the way to his weeping mother.


	21. Rope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things that go bump in the night

Carmen wakes in the night to the telltale rustling of mice in the walls. She's never seen then, but every night they find more detritus to push around, clicking and crashing and disturbing her sleep as much as their tiny paws can manage. She's debated calling the landlord about them, but the old hardass would either blame her for their presence or insist they weren't really here because she'd never seen them.

She twists and turns between the sheets long after the mice have finished their nightly route through the wall. Sleep evades Carmen with a frustrating dexterity, hovering just out of reach and jerking her awake every time she thinks she's about to hit it full force.

A creek falls with full forced thump on the dead air of the room. And maybe Carmen was never anywhere near sleep because she jerks upright like she's been shot. Fumbling for her bedside light, she misses and catches her phone instead. When she flips on the lamp functions, the cold white light picks out all the wrong pieces of her bedroom, making her feel like she's looking at it in darkness with an instagram filter hovering over the picture.

The light glances off the door and her stomach sinks to see it open, ever so slightly. She double checks with her recent memory and decides that she definitely doesn't have any pets that might have been able to push their way I go her room while her back was done.

If she had a cat, she probably wouldn't have mice. She'll have to ask the landlord.

Common sense dictates that it's nothing, and if she would only go back to sleep she can pretend that none of this ever happened. Her fearful lizard brain wants to go back to sleep before she looks too close and scares herself any further, as if any potential serial killer would be less likely to hurt her if she didn't get a good look at their face.

The desperate desire to be one of those people who faces all their problems head on makes her want to leap out of bed and check that she's alone tonight. It's a distant, secondary desire, till she notices the dark line on the floor, peaking out from behind the door. She blinks and could almost swear that she sees it moving.

This time when Carmen reaches for the lamp, she hits the switch. It's friendly, orange glow makes the room look less like the site of a horror film and more like a safe haven, but there is still definitely something on the floor.

Carmen approaches, heart on her mouth and the thickest book she had by head bedside table raised over her head as a makeshift weapon. If it came to a fight, she probably couldn't do shit with it,but pretending that she might be able to put up a fight makes her feel better.

The thing by the door is a length of rope, vanishing out I to the dark of the hall beyond. It's tough to the touch, and almost as thick as her wrist. Behind her, something clicks and falls through the gap in the walls. Sodding mice.

Carmen turns her head, like she might have developed x-ray vision and suddenly be able to see the rodents.

The last thought Carmen ever manages to fully process is that the mice are wise to her. The next second, the rope is round her neck, pulling tight and crushing her windpipe. She flails, trying to find a warm body at her back to sink her nails into and coming up short.

The book is abandoned on the floor. Carmen wrestles for breath that won't come, and feels her body relax from under her as she slips into unconsciousness


	22. Cut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something strange has happened to St John's mound

The hill rises up either side of them, blocking out the sun and transmuting a perfectly pleasant day into something cold and unsettling. Soren crosses his arms over his chest and wishes he’s brought a jumper with him. “I don’t think this was like this the last time we were here.”

Val shakes her head very slowly, when she turns back to look at him she’s the picture of worried confusion. “I was here two days ago, it wasn’t like this then either.”

St John’s mound isn’t exactly huge, but it’s the most prominent feature of the landscape for about five miles. If you’re in Woorley, it’s the easiest place to get to if you want to lie on the grass, have a picnic, and hopefully persuade your girlfriend that you don’t need to go on a six hour walk in order to have not wasted the day.

But it’s been broken, rather fundamentally. “I mean, it’s gotta be construction work of some kind.” Soren prompts. “You couldn’t move that much earth without diggers and shit, right?”

“Right.” Val frowns. “But…wouldn’t they leave the earth behind?”

They check round both sides of St John’s mound and find nothing. Standing on the south side, they look through the gap running through the middle of the hill, splitting in clean in two and flaring upwards, as if to let the warm afternoon drown itself in its depths.

“Looks like someone sliced clean through it, like with a knife.” Soren says.

Val doesn’t say a word, but when he reaches out to take her hand, Soren finds she’s shaking.


	23. Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" Comes the cry. And when she looks down from her tower, ever so high and ever so inaccessible, she sees the bright eyed wondering yet another boy playing at being a man. She will be their salvation, they have been taught, she will lead them all to victory.

She smiles and feels the writhing mass she hosts upon her head snicker at the idea of him leaving here with her strapped across the back of his horse. Raised away from society,no one to talk to. Rapunzel has no manners, they'd send her back by the end of the week.

She does let down her hair though, thats part of the bargain. It glistens golden in the sunlight. It's so good! It knows how to lie perfectly still when it needs to, playing dead as far as it can.

This boy has a round face and Rapunzel can just tell he let's himself get taken advantage of five times before breakfast, every damn day. He smiles at her, before sinking to his knees and mumbling some garbage proposal that his mother probably insisted she would like.

"I just...your beauty..." He stumbles, trips, and it's impossible to say if he means it.

Rapunzel's hair springs to life. The letting it down part is nothing, it's the picking it up that's the trick. Eyes snap open, as golden as the scales that ripple down the rest of their body, the little pretties who share her headspace. Ha. Headspace.

A thousand snakes with two thousand eyes. And before the boy can scream he's had the life squeezed out of him, falling away with a gasp.

What's left is broken bones and too much hair. She has to shear it off before she gets started.

"Eat up." Rapunzel hums as the snakes get to work. This will keep them all quiet for another week at least


	24. Consume

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eat it

“Eat it.” She says, shoving the bowl under your nose and despite the mould growing down one side of the stew and the human fingers clogging up the other, you kind of want to.

Eat it, it’s good for you. A growing boy needs plenty of protein, plenty of brain food. Except in this case brain food is just brain and food is just anything you can get down your throat.

The smell, like the rising screams of the damned rising from the below the floorboards, the colour like the blood was poured fresh from the throat of some hapless animal. And it calls to you, and it calls.

Eat it.

Eat it.

The stew breaks past the ever firm barrier of your lips, ghosting across your tongue but cloying to the insides of your mouth as you swallow it down. The foul odour of milk left too long before drinking, the slime of meat that has been left to fester. You could gag, but there’s no space for air as the slop keeps coming, your own hands holding up the bowl to force more in, by the simple act of gravity, you continue.

You eat it. Every last drop. The high pitched cackle that echoes through this dismal little house is as nothing compared to the roaring in your ears as the fetid bowl hits the wood of the table. With blood dripping down your chin, you stare her down and let the anger in your breast take hold. You see now, why they call her witch.


	25. Needle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I caught you knockin' at my cellar door
> 
> Warnings for this story: drug use

In and out and in and out. Like sewing, like his mother tried to teach him back when he was small and had too much energy to sit still. The thin strung thread of his veins claw their way up his arm. He’s running short on the good stuff, having to get creative. In between the toes, or so Joe says, but what does Joe know?

At the other end of the tunnel, the light blooms bright and warm, framing the monsters on the tracks. The darkness, the dull eyes that reflect nothing and see nothing, staring back at him. He hates them, but most of all he’s scared. The guttural clicking of the wheels underneath him swells and bellows, till he can barely hear himself scream and any thought worth having has long since been tossed to the dogs.

Tossed with the dinners he never ate, the job offers he never followed through on, the friendships he let wither and die of their own accord. All that matters is the running of the sewing machine, so much easier than doing these things by hand. Up and down, up and down. The bobbin whirling faster and faster, daring him to grab hold of its snagged end and let himself be pulled into its gravity.

Down to the light, where the monsters lurk. And beyond that? If anything lies beyond.

If anything lies beyond, then here we are, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Dancing back between the two of them, unable to choose our fate.

The needle slips in his hand, the plunger popping beneath his thumb of his own foolish accord. The dread that he might have wasted it grips him like the ghost of his father, then vanishes in a halo of light.

The light isn’t so strong these days, but it can still pull him away. Towards the dark shapes and dull eyes, towards whatever comes next. He sighs and wonders if this is what it’s like to be happy.  


	26. Ritual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> School girls are not to be messed with

The librarian had laughed and told the four of them that these books weren’t for girls, and that had pretty much sealed the deal. In retrospect, Mrs Foddy probably just meant that they were too young, but Donna Matthews brother supposedly got his hands on something ancient and foul last summer and the suggestion that gender might have anything to do with it put them all on the war path. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Meet Elise, her of the brute stubbornness and the inability to let anyone else get a word in edgeways. The ringleader, if you will, though more by nature than design. Bossiness passed her by to make way for something far more terrifying and so she was the one to demand that they all be allowed extra time in the library at the end of the day to finish a project that the exasperated Mrs Foddy reminded them all was not due for another two weeks.

“We want to do it tonight.”  Elise was very good at keeping her voice just below a shout, so no one could really accuse her of being rude.

Next up is Tina, the smallest and quietest of the girls. Puberty either hadn’t yet had its way with her or she was destined to always have to stand on tiptoes to reach things her peers had no trouble rising to. In order to keep up she had had to become very quick and very strong, so she was the one to dash away from their table while Mrs Foddy sorted books out into the Dewey Decimal System and slip under the gate to the Room of Forbidden Things. The spell that tripped the alarm was only supposed to go off if the gate was forced, but Tina was small enough to fit between the bars all on her own.

Mrs Foddy would be round in a matter of minutes to check that all was well. Part of librarian duties required an unseemly paranoia regarding the state of the Room of Forbidden Things. It seemed, perhaps, a foolish idea to place so much dangerous knowledge within reach of such young children, but the law was quite clear that these sorts of manuscripts had to be held in a place of learning or not at all, and every teacher has a book of dark magic or two cluttering up their past that they’d leap at the chance to legitimise.

The shelves were high, but Tina was light enough to scale them, slipping a particularly dark looking tome off the top shelf. They had no particular idea of what they were looking for. Just something bad, something girls weren’t supposed to have.

The book slipped between the struts of the gate first, and Tina followed after it, concealing it within her school sweatshirt just in time to avoid the scrutiny of Mrs Foddy.

“You have a book there, Tina?”

Tina nodded and hurried back to the table.

To centre stage came Veronica, who liked and disliked Elise in equal measure and so of course was eternally joined to her at the hip. Bossiness had not passed on Veronica, and neither had a fierce need for organisation and order. Elise may have made the demand, but It would have meant nothing if Veronica hadn’t been at her shoulder to back it up.

“We’ll need unicorn horn, griffon feather…. Goodness, that’s a lot of seaweed.” Her finger ran down the ingredients list for the spell they intended to perform. A certain amount of this would need to be pilfered from various classes, some possibly even from the stores intended for older students, and some could be bought in town at the weekend with the combined forces of their pocket money. “We shall have to forgo sweets for a couple of weeks.”

Everyone agreed this was a hard, but noble sacrifice. Veronica tallied up time and resources before informing the table that they would need almost a month to put together this little venture.

“A month?” Elise scowled. “Won’t Foddy notice the book’s gone by then?”

“It’s Mr Singheart’s book.” Tina said, very quietly. Perhaps no one really heard her say it.

Veronica pulled out her best pen and a fresh sheet of paper. “Not to worry. I can copy it down now and Tina can get the book back before we leave today. No one will notice.”

It was a good plan, and one that worked quite perfectly. By the time the dinner bell rang through the school and they were well and truly chased from their spot in the library, they had even found some time to work on their project, though it was rather hard to care about such things when fun was afoot.

 

 

 

The last girl, who up till now has not been mentioned on account of how uncomfortable she makes all her classmates feel, was Klara. Klara had grown up abroad and spoke three languages as a result, each of them with a slightly different accent. She was new in as much as she hadn’t been present at the very beginning of Year Seven, but here in Year Nine she still didn’t feel like part of the furniture in the way a classmate is supposed to.

Even if one is a young girl, a type of creature that is perhaps not allowed but definitely supposed to do whatever it pleases, one is not supposed to be quite so obsessed with the dark as Klara. It wasn’t her idea to steal the book, or to pick the spell, or to lash out at Mrs Foddy, but her presence was felt as permission by Elise, Tina and Veronica, who all felt very pleased that Miss Drimmond had put all three of them together.

Once the ingredients had been gathered and the place set – the back of the Year Nine girls’ dormitory, sometime after midnight on a Thursday, all heads turned towards Klara. Their hard work had been invaluable, but she was the one who was supposed to carry them over the finish line. Apart from anything else, if any of them were going to stand a chance at successfully incanting the words for this spell, it was her.

Klara didn’t smile or frown or make any indication that she was particularly delighted by this. She cast her eyes to the six points mapped out in the circle, lingering over the recently deceased body of a rat they had caught in a shoebox as their serving sacrifice, and she started to read.

Hands upon each other, breathing deep and even and in perfect unison, the girls kept their eyes at the point of entry. Nothing so complicated as a calling dance, or a tune that must be kept, or even a human soul, just a rhythm, slow and steady.

Light sparked, first off the pages, written out in Veronica’s handwriting, then in the middle of the room. The rat vanished and the chalk shifted two centimetres to the left, and then the space between the worlds opened up and the first set of talons hooked over the rim of space and time. You could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps the girls were waiting for one of their rank to pull out, to let them move on from this silliness with a minimal amount of ribbing, but Klara kept reciting with such force that the others felt powerless to stop her.

And in an instant, they beheld the horrid thing they had summoned. Four girls, who had granted themselves mastery of a creature of the dark.


	27. Collection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tour of my collection

The largest came from a vagrant on the underground. You can always tell, with that sort of person, they don’t know how to dress themselves. And it’s such a little thing, no one really misses them. He had been a big chap, but he was slow, didn’t realise what was happening till the deed was done.

The particularly pretty and delicate one is not female, as you may have assumed. It’s actually the star attraction of this little collection, handed down from father to son as a relic of some long ago struggle. Only the line ran out, of course, and with a little financial persuasion it changed hands in a moment.

Most of them I get from the local morgue, which has a certain excitement attached to it. You have to sneak in round the back just after lights out, so they think the alarm is acting up rather than someone is breaking in. Then I run through the first holding room and take whatever I can find before slipping right on out again.

I found this rather worn number when I was digging up the back garden a few years ago. Isn’t it funny that it should have found its way to me? I mean, it’s hardly common for these things to turn up on people’s property like that but I suppose I always have been a lucky devil.

Let’s see…the items that belonged once to children have to be taken most carefully. Their parents tend to notice when they go missing and people get so hyper vigilant about their little ones that it’s hard to slip in edgeways to catch them out. Lots of hanging around near parks but not quite in parks, and slipping in when everyone’s back is turned. Tricky stuff, I’ve been told off a fair few times before I’ve gotten anywhere with it, so I suppose I am quite proud of these.

Anything else that takes your fancy? Well do give me a shout if there is. I could talk about my glove collection all day.  


	28. Horns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say, in one voice. You are safe.
> 
> I’m not, Charlie replies. They’re hunting me.

The dark magnifies sound better than a megaphone, ratchetting up the tension creeping through Charlie’s spine. Her breath comes shallow, eyes unable to adjust to the black. They’ll have dogs with them, when they come. They’ll knock her to the ground and rip her limb from limb before they’ve even gotten her back to town for trial.

The hard, familiar weight of the road beneath her feet transforms to soft grass faster than she was expecting, and Charlie stumbles and falls. The night time damp of the field starts seeping into her clothes immediately and she wishes she brought something warmer, something sturdier. She wishes she knew how to stand and fight so she didn’t have to run.

Voices, raised and excited, catch on the far end of the wind. She only has so much time. Picking herself back up, Charlie dashes forward, or what she hopes is forward, praying to whatever God might exist that she won’t run straight into a wall, or fall down a well, or that the rushing in her ears would prevent her for keeping an ear out for the river, rushing through the ravine five miles south. Five miles, she’s never run five miles in her life.

And adrenaline can only keep her running for so long. Time passes and doesn’t pass, trapping her in a divot in the stream. The sounds of the mob running up behind her fades in and out as the night rolls on, and the sun shows no sign of rising.

When she smells them, Charlie’s not quite sure if it’s just another part of herself or if it’s real. She takes a deep breath, lets her feet rumble to a stop. She hasn’t really been running for some time now. Some time. Any time. She doesn’t run.

A warm muzzle brushes against her hand, and a flank rubs up against her side. They say, in one voice. _You are safe._

 _I’m not_ , Charlie replies. _They’re hunting me._

_They do that. You have to run, here, we’ll show you._

They run together, as a herd. The voices get closer and closer, and the smell of dog sticks thick to the inside of Charlie’s nose. All she knows is that she has to get away from that, fast.

It’s easier for the others, their legs were better designed for speed.

By the time the fires shine out over the fields, Charlie would rather live the rest of her life in the black than have to face the music of what she left behind. The golden glow of the flames rises high over her head, casting the deer running at her side in shadows and transforming her small human body into a silhouette that seems to stretch for miles.

If she squints, she can just about see where the shape of her head ends and the outline of her horns begins. Marking her out as a beast, as cattle. Ready for the slaughter.

The first guns go off, and the black returns for good.


	29. Tall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magic beans

They are marked in the old texts, drawn as tall as mountains standing next to man, and the people paid to look at the evidence left behind and make sense of it all shrugged their shoulders and blamed artistic licence. A primitive idea on the magnitude of sizing, or a crude attempt at perspective. Either way, not much to be excited about.

The beans, found in the bottom of a pot at the back of a hollowed out cave, at first seem like nothing. “You think they’ll grow?” Shepherd asks.

Muller shrugs. “Might as well try it out.”

A fun office activity, while they peel back the layers of history surrounding the rest of the artefacts they found. All it takes is water. Probably, nothing will happen, but probably is just a question begging for an answer.

At least, if nothing happens, they can send the things off to the lab and find out something about what these people were eating. Archaeology is just stalking from a point far removed enough that the object of your affection can’t reasonably challenge you on your obsession.

“It’ll be corn of some kind.” Muller assures them all.

“Or maze.” Povilas suggests.

Shepherd grins at them both. “Or magic beans.”

“You should have shut your damn mouth.” Povilas tells him, the next morning, when they come in to work and the office is strewn with vines. They pulsate and twitch when touched, so thin and yet so sturdy. Someone finds a pair of secateurs and they do nothing to halt it’s advancement.

None of them have a garden back at home, so they sneak round the back of the building on their lunch break, each carrying as much of a third of the weight of the plant as they can manage, and hope no one will notice that it’s been added to the herbaceous border they have instead of a garden here.

“Someone’s definitely going to notice.” Shepherd looks at the messy tangle of vines.

Muller nods, but keeps hunting for a trace of flowering buds on the plant. “I wonder which part of it you eat.”

The weekend passes and the building is subsumed. They all know this before they head back in to work though, because the shadow of the trunk that the vines wind themselves in to has cast itself far and wide over their piddly little town.

Up and up, into the clouds. The ground has broken and swallowed whole neighbourhoods. Povilas shakes his head and weeps, talks about how they need to turn themselves into the police.

“No way.” Shepherd recoils. “All we did was grow a plant.”

“No point.” Muller settles down on the ground next to the trunk and points to the precious cargo of beans, already dropped from the oversized pods hanging overhead. You could lose your damn mind if one of those fell on you.

The promise of something more. The three of them squint at the sky and wonder how tall something has to be before it’s definitively the size of a mountain.


	30. Swine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pigs will eat anything

Pigs will eat anything, from the rotting food at the bottom of the compost heap to the coat off your back. They’ve got guts of steel, teeth of iron and a will as unbreakable as the heart of a star. But they eat anything, so they’re stupid

Stupid fat pigs who eat anything and squeal when they’re happy or when they’re angry or when they have to get out of bed in the morning.

The theory goes that people shouldn’t be scared of the government, governments should be scared of the people. Which checks out, when you look at the sheer numbers that the one holds against the other. People could overrun the workings of any country if they wished, if they were organised, the object of the government is to keep them organised.

The farmers lay out fences to keep the bull pigs from the sows. They cordon off the babies when they get to be a certain age. Old enough for slaughter. If you’re old enough to squeal, you’re old enough to die, so the old adage goes.

But protest doesn’t do that much, in and of itself. It’s an act meant to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the state of things, to come together and remind the government of our choosing that we could tear down their homes and build a new world without them, if we wanted. But instead our outrage gets read as suggestion, and nothing changes, and we are legion and we are nothing.

Hundreds of pigs, living together on the farm. They’ll roll in each other’s shit. They’ll squeal, for food, for anything.

They’ll eat anything, you know.


	31. Halloween

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tonight's the night

The crack between this world and the next is not an open wound, so much as a valve, pumping blood from one chamber to another. The next world is just one of a cascade of places you might visit before you tap out altogether.

The next world doesn’t look right, from our perspective. Everything disjointed, rotten, breathing down are necks from behind a barely human mask. We know, perhaps, that it can’t really harm us, and also that it would if it could. So when the crack splays itself wide enough to let a little something through, we breathe in tight and hope that this will not be the year that the horrible things from beyond the veil work out how to play the game on their own terms.

In amongst our attempts to dress up as them, painting their skin over our own like camouflage, we lose track of the real thing, hobbling through the backstreets of your suburbs, prancing across rooftops in your hometown, singing sweet lullabies to you from the forest. They come, they try their luck, and we look up at them with amusement that might once have been wonder and ask them if they’re tricking or treating.

The trick, we play on ourselves, as all good tricks are played. To believe that the real might be false and bet our lives on that assumption, is the root of the thing. We do it without invitation. The treat is what they give back, the sly suspicion that maybe…that perhaps…that this night of all nights…

Valves open wide and thud shut, by morning they’ll be gone. The trick of it all is in making the moment last while you have it. The treat of it all is knowing it will return to you next year, on All Hallows Eve, when something not of this world shares your living space for a single night.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love. Come find me on [tumblr](http://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_)


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